After fall, Pembroke roofer longs to walk again

John White shattered his feet in a 30-foot fall. Hospitalized since the accident six weeks ago, he waits in bed, thinking of the day he can return home.

Andrew Lightman

For the last six weeks, John White has been in bed at New England Sinai Hospital, waiting. His feet shattered and his knees, hips and back damaged from a 30-foot fall onto a stone wall, White, 38, can do little else but wait.

On Oct. 9, the Pembroke resident fell off a platform while roofing a home in Wellesley.

Now, his broken feet stabilized with metal pins and fitted from the outside with an “erector set” of metal spokes, he waits for the next of many surgeries.

Looking at the two-year-old family photo hanging above the radiator in his hospital room, White waits for the chance to go home again and be with his wife and three children.

He also longs for the day when he can walk again.

“I know in my heart I’m going to walk,” he said. “But (the doctor) said, ‘Yeah, it’s going to take some time.’”

All the while, his family struggles to make ends meet while White remains stuck in that hospital bed.

Kerry White, a teacher’s assistant at the Cardinal Cushing School in Hanover, was forced to take four weeks off to be with her husband at the hospital as they met with doctors and sorted out his care and recovery plans.

With her husband hospitalized and unlikely to ever return to being a roofer, she has gone back to work, working a part-time schedule.

“We tried our best to be on our own, do the two-income working-family thing,” she said. “And then to have it ripped from you ”

To see her husband each day, Kerry White makes the hourlong trip to the hospital, after work and before she gets the kids from day care.

The children only visit on weekends, if White is strong enough to hide the pain from them.

Kerry White said their daughter Erin, 6, cries every day, while Nicole, 8, is trying hard to help at home with her father gone.

The hardest part for White, though, is how his son, Jack, 3, won’t sit on the hospital bed with him. Jack is scared he might hurt his dad, Kerry White said.

Yet despite the pain and separation, White said he feels fortunate to be alive with the good chance he will walk again.

White plans to return to school so he can learn to use computers and start in a new field.

“I just try to look at the bright side of things,” he said. “God has a plan. We’ll see what it is. Maybe it’s for me to go back to school.”

For now, though, with money scarce in the White household, friends are trying to help the family make it through the winter.

Nikki Robbins, a family friend for the last four years, said she has been helping Kerry White by watching the children once a week. Robbins is also trying to raise money through the parents’ network at her day care center.